Leg driven robots can be configured to walk and/or run and even climb. Many prior art robots are designed to be highly versatile but at the expense of complexity. With numerous joints and degrees of freedom, prior art robots require complex linkages and numerous motors and encoders rendering them bulky, heavy, slow, expensive, and unreliable. And, even the most versatile robots are not well suited to both walking and climbing. For climbing robots, weight is a critical design factor. For all robots, speed, cost, complexity, compactness, and reliability are often critical design factors.